To Taste The Light
by parityparable
Summary: When Dr. Martinez drops the 'we're moving' bomb on her kids, nobody says it's going to be a walk in the park, but they'll make it through together. Kind of. Little do they know, there's smoke on the horizon for them all, and by the time Max realizes she's choking on the insidious ways of a raven-eyed Baltimore boy, the fire will already have engulfed everything she's ever known. AU
1. Nulla: Limbo

**AN: **Hey, it's me. So, my summer break has officially begun and it seems that I have a pattern going on where whenever I do get the chance to write, I don't, then I complain about how I didn't when I don't have the time anymore. I'm trying to break that streak by writing a new story – this one, incidentally (ha ha).

I do have a prologue for another story up on this account – a Maximum Ride OC one – and I'll get back to that at some point, but right now I've really been getting back into JP's characters. This one is short, just over 850 words, but hey, it's only a prologue. The chapters will be longer.

Without further ado, I present to you: _TO TASTE THE LIGHT~_

_._

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo _~

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_**.**_

_**p**-r-o-l-o-g-u-e__  
_

_**n **u l l a__ :_

_**l **__i m b o_

_._

_**c**__hapter __**s**__ong:_

_**b**__ring __**m**__e __**t**__he __**h**__orizon – __**c**__an __**y**__ou __**f**__eel __**m**__y __**h**__eart_

_**c**__an you hear the silence?_

_**c**__an you see the dark?_

_**c**__an you fix the broken?_

_**c**__an you feel... can you feel my heart?_

_._

_**c**__an you help the hopeless?_

_**w**__ell, __**i**__'m begging on my knees,_

_**c**__an you save my bastard soul?_

_**w**__ill you wait for me?_

_._

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo ~  
_

* * *

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It was cold. Oh, so cold.

"Ah, Doctor Martinez? Yes – my name is Doctor Gunther-Hagen; I work for Mister Pruitt,"

Gunther-Hagen's voice was remarkably steady – and you wouldn't even have to be _au fait_ with his current situation to know why his calm tone was impressive, all you'd have to do was look at his face. His forehead was lined with tension and stress, his mouth taut with unspoken fear, his irises clouding and shaking and repeatedly slipping out of focus.

And his skin was cold. Oh, so cold.

The phone hushed and Gunther-Hagen started talking almost the very moment Martinez was finished.

"I've called as a result of a recent staffing shortage on a… new project at the NYCI facility and, upon inspection of your recent progress, as well records of your past work; my superiors have decided to offer you a promotion. If you should accept, they will be expecting your presence on-site beginning on the twenty-first of August,"

There was a brief silence followed by a muffled reply from the other end of the line, to which he began nodding slowly and thoughtfully.

"Yes, I understand completely," he murmured, pausing his nodding for a split second before establishing a firmer, more enthusiastic nod. "Well, full details would be emailed to you and further discussions would be held upon your arrival – should you undertake the promotion, of course,"

Another burst of faint speaking was spat from the phone – a wall telephone, not a cell, but even so, it was probably one of the most contemporary, sophisticated wall phones to exist. Gunther-Hagen coughed softly, seemingly a fair fraction less taxed and anxious than he had been mere minutes ago, though the boxy, glaringly white room with its clinical content and stifling disinfectant stench was just as aggressively algid as it had always been.

"Well that's grea–" Gunther-Hagen halted abruptly mid-sentence, giving himself a mental slap. How could his polished professional façade have slipped so easily? Any and every word he spoke during this call could be held against him. He thrust the phone away from his mouth as he gave a small cough, reigning in his emotions in exchange for his default cool tone and stony expression. He returned the apparatus to its perch on his cheek. "That is decidedly agreeable, thank you, Doctor. I will be informing the Board and Council of our mutual affirmation immediately, to allow them time to introduce your name into the deliberation over the composition of the aforementioned project's specialised unit,"

God, that was a lot of long words. Gunther-Hagen wondered often what the point of all this jarring professionalism and overly ceremonial etiquette really was, or if there was even a purpose at all other than to make him sound sickeningly erudite. He almost rolled his eyes, but he was still half-listening to Dr Martinez and was much too immersed in the robotic autopilot mode he always used while working to produce anything more than a twitch in his left eye.

(And it was still too Goddamn cold.)

"Well, this information will of course be attached to all communicative documents of which you will be a recipient," he continued reassuringly, "and you will certainly be thoroughly debriefed, along with the entirety of your new colleague unit, upon arrival,"

After what, in reality, was roughly five more minutes, though it felt like a lifetime, Gunther-Hagen replaced the phone to its nest on the wall. He held in a sigh. That particular call was over and done with, but his work was most definitely not.

He only just managed to swallow the sigh again as it clawed back up his throat at the thought. Seven down, seven to go.

Dr Hans pressed his fingertips to the cover of the phonebook lying on the thin, wheeled metal table resting below the wall phone and slid it off the surface, catching it swiftly with his other hand. Carefully opening it, he flicked nimbly through the pages until he found the 'D' section. This was all for show, of course. He had memorised all fourteen numbers long ago. He had been using this excuse since he made the first call anyway, taking the opportunity to quell his nerves while still looking as if he were being productive.

He found the end of the 'D's pretty quickly. As his eyes flitted between numbers on the page and the numbers on the manual display, he felt himself shiver involuntarily. His eyes hovered a little too long over the book before slowly sliding sideways to find the small black device in the corner, fixed to the ceiling.

Its flashing red dot blinked at him intently, the darkened lens below trained on his every move.

In that moment, he remembered. He remembered why his voice had been so 'remarkably steady'. He remembered the point of all that 'jarring professionalism and overly ceremonial etiquette'. He remembered why his heart was frozen – not solid, but trapped, encased in ice for ever.

And he knew that it wasn't the broken thermostat's fault he had goose bumps.

"Ah, Doctor Dwyer? Yes – my name is Doctor Gunther-Hagen; I work for Mister Pruitt,"

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo _~

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**.**

**AN: **So there you have it. Thanks a bunch for just reading this; it really means a lot to me that someone would even find my stuff readable. This is going to be a full story and I honestly have no clue how many chapters there'll be. We'll see, anyway. It isn't prewritten, so I don't know how long it'll be between chapters either, but as I said earlier, I'm on break, so hopefully I'll have a lot of time to write. It would make me indescribably happy if you could drop a review and any critique you could give could make the story immeasurably better, but thank you so much regardless.

Catch ya later :)

- Leo


	2. I: Gravity

**AN: **Firstly, I'd like to confess that I've never been to Buckeye – or anywhere in Arizona, actually. I didn't neglect to do my research, but I apologise for any mistakes or misconceptions. Secondly, thanks a million for your reviews (all two of you, haha); they really gave me some things to think about. Lastly, the next chapter will probably take twice as long as this one (I think this has been 6 days?) because I'm going away until Monday, sorry.

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**o**__-n-e_

_**I **__:_

_**g** ra vi t__y_

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_**c**__hapter __**s**__ong:_

_**f**__lorence__** + t**__he__** m**__achine__** – w**__hat__** t**__he__** w**__ater__** g**__ave__** m**__e_

_**a**__nd oh, poor __**a**__tlas_

_**t**__he world's a beast of a burden_

_**y**__ou've been holding up a long time_

_**a**__nd all this longing_

_**a**__nd the ships are left to rust_

_**t**__hat's what the water gave us_

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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_MAX_

Afternoons on that side of Buckeye, AZ were generally pretty tranquil. It wasn't hard, with the sun breathing down your neck and only the soft chorus of cricket croaks to keep you company, to forget that the place's population was probably somewhere over 56,000. It was especially effortless for that little tidbit to slip your mind when you were jogging home with titanic gusts of wind and rain drumming down your neck and only the sickly squelch of your sodden socks to keep you company. Why? Because every single person with even a shred of common sense had brought the freaking washing in already and wouldn't be suffering from hypothermia.

I was not one of those people.

I was actually one of the people who didn't even notice the temperature suddenly plummeting, or those great hulking storm clouds rolling in because they were too busy annihilating their friends at B-ball – thereafter I became one of the people trying to see past their stringy, water-logged hair and the constant stream of falling water to check for cars, hoping to all hope they would get home before they could get hit by lightning. Or, rather, I was the only person doing that. Go figure.

My phone had been buzzing in my pocket, shielded from the elements by my faux leather messenger bag, for the past five minutes, give or take. That was probably either my mom, worried, my best friend Sam, also worried, or my half-sister Ella, scavenging a ride home. Whichever way, if any of them expected me to risk assisting Mother Nature in the brutal murder of my phone, they could think again.

As I rounded corner after corner, I wondered how far it really was from my house to the park. In the sun, this trip would usually drain ten minutes, but it felt like the streets had stretched and every intersection was a million miles away. I recognized the houses I was passing, but I couldn't piece together where I was exactly. Nothing was making sense.

I stopped under some overhanging branches of a tree growing in someone's front yard, scrabbling for even just a minute of respite from the howling wind and growling thunder. On the road, the raindrops battled like sword-wielding soldiers, leaping and crashing into each other. The gutters were already overflowing and the drain plates let out tinny whines as they too faced the water's assault.

I checked my watch (waterproof, thank the Gods). 5:51pm.

Stepping back out from my makeshift shelter, I ran on into the storm.

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* * *

~ I ~ _gravity ~_

* * *

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"Mom?" I hollered, finally through the door after my 5000-year-long sprint through the fall lightning storm. "Mom, I'm alive!"

I tossed my keys on the kitchen counter and dumped my bag on one of the chairs around the island; I was about to thump up the stairs when I heard a weak "That's nice, honey!" from the garden. What was my mom doing out in the back, in this weather? I loped through the utility room and hovered in the open glass door.

"Uh, mom?"

She was at the washing line, throwing damp garments into a plastic basket at full tilt. She shrugged a shoulder in greeting, but didn't take her attention off the task. I shook my head, lips turning up at the corners as I trotted out to help. As I ripped my sister's tees off the wire, I glanced up at my mom. Her hair and clothes were only speckled with rain, so I guessed she hadn't been outside for long, but that wasn't what got me.

What with her being so warm and breezy most of the time, I wouldn't have been surprised to see such a thoughtful expression on her face; she couldn't _always _be in Mama Mode. I just wasn't expecting her to look so… _troubled. _Everyone worries about things once in a while, some more than others. My mom, though, looked more than just worried. Her dark eyebrows were drawn up, as if afraid or confused, her lips pursed tightly and her chocolate brown doe-eyes forlorn and sorrowful. That was the kind of look you'd expect from Valencia Martinez when pigs flew.

Then she noticed me watching and it was gone, erased entirely as if it had never been there. Mama Mode was back in business. I heard her say "Thanks for helping, Max," from somewhere distant, but she was only feet away, still moving hurriedly around the line, and I realized that I'd stopped pulling clothes off.

A little spooked, I got back to work.

_Jeez, I guess those pigs managed to figure out how air travel works after all._

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* * *

~ I ~ _gravity ~_

* * *

.

I was still sopping wet when I pulled up at Ella's friend's house, but I'd laid out our dog's waterproof blankets over the front seats before I left. I parked on the curb and hopped out to help Ella, who was already standing at the door saying goodbye, with her overnight bags.

I swear this girl had another sleep-over with another friend every night. I did alright with remembering their names at first, but their faces just ended up blurring together and I couldn't think whether there were two friends called Robin and Kylie or there was one friend called Rylie (which might have been odd because I had a memory like an elephant, but I'm not kidding when I say there were probably a hundred of them. I honestly didn't know how she coped).

We eventually managed to get her newly dripping bags into the trunk (how much stuff could she have needed to take?) and I eventually managed to wrestle my newly dripping sister into the front seat because she wouldn't stop trying to yell to her friend over the rain. We drove in comfortable silence at first, before I remembered something.

"By the way," I began, still unsure myself, "Mom said she has something important to tell us,"

Ella didn't seem fazed. "Like what?"

"I don't know. She didn't say anything but that," I confessed, training my eyes on the road. We were quiet again for another couple of minutes, but I needed to say something. "I was helping her take the washing in earlier, 'cause it was raining–"

"It still is raining, Max. It is raining like the Devil's anu–"

"– and she looked like something was really bothering her. Whatever this 'news' is about, I have a feeling it's not going to be a good thing,"

Ella looked at me and I glanced back at her, but quickly turned back to the road. She carried on studying me carefully for a few minutes – if I couldn't see it, I could definitely feel it – before frowning into her lap for a moment and gazing out of her window, resting her elbow at the base of the glass with her chin in her palm.

The silence we fell into wasn't really comfortable or uncomfortable. It was more of an 'I'm thinking, don't bother me' silence. The dead air ruled for the rest of the ride.

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* * *

~ I ~ _gravity ~_

* * *

.

I sat on the hard wooden sill below my bedroom window, listening to the storm. It was some time past seven and I'd just taken a shower; Ella had somehow managed to get to the bathroom before me, but she wasn't prepared for my mighty arm-wrestling skills, so I'd claimed the next 15 minutes of shower time as my own. ("Face it, Ella – you'll never defeat the great Max Martinez! Bow to your queen!" I'd told her while graciously accepting my prize. I may also have cackled.)

I'd cracked the window open and sat on the recessed ledge with my back up against the hinged side. I actually felt pretty peaceful there, listening to the spatter of raindrops on the glass pane and watching the clouds light up in flashes, with the cool air blowing in over my bare legs. That's probably why I had a full-body spasm and ended up bashing my head against the short stretch of wall behind me when my dog decided to make a surprise guest appearance.

"Oh my God, Magnolia," I growled, rubbing at my scalp. I rolled my eyes, looking down to see her standing to attention in the middle of the burgundy carpet. "Alright, come here, you little sausage,"

She wasn't watching me, though. Mags was gazing mournfully up at the open window and slowly lying herself on the floor (which didn't take long, considering how basset hounds are all low-to-the-ground, fat kind of dogs). I slid off the sill and my brows drew together as I made my way over to comfort her, assuming that she'd been frightened by the choppy downpour. I crouched and laid a hand on her back; she quickly responded by rolling over, the universal belly rub signal, but let out a long whimper and flopped on her side when I began to pet her stomach.

That was weird.

Just as I was about to go and find my mom – she was a vet, she would have known what was up (and something was definitely up;no dog can resist my belly rubs) – the woman in question called up the stairs.

"Girls, would you mind coming to the kitchen for a second?"

Ah, typical Mama Martinez technique #374: get your kids to do what you want by phrasing an instruction like a request, as if they have a choice. I noted that she'd realized we knew how she did that, so she'd upped the dosage and thrown in trademark technique #235 as well: get your kids to go where you want by telling them to meet you in the kitchen, so they'll bother to do it because think they're getting cookies.

Actually, there was a kind of chocolate-y, vanilla-ish scent wafting through the open…

_Mine._

Like lightning, I scooped up Mags and shot down the stairs ("Max honey, stop running on the stairs, you'll rack up a ton in hospital bills!") to the source of the holy scent: _the promised food. _Mom was just taking a second tray out of the oven and laying it down next to the first; both of them were blanketed in the chow of the Gods. I set Magnolia down at the door and stuffed a couple in my hamster-pouch mouth while mom was busy closing the oven door.

"Do I detect – whoa!" cried Ella, suited up in a fuzzy bathrobe and loose towel turban, almost tripping over Mags. The dog had plopped herself on the floor in the doorway. "You put her there on purpose, didn't you?" she accused, casting me a scornful look through strands of her newly wet hair as she stepped over the hound.

"Wheh, whoh on Erf wooh meh you fink dah?" I answer innocently through a mouthful of hot, mushy Heaven.

Mom chuckled as she slid her oven gloves off and set them down neatly next to the cookie trays, quickly deflecting Ella's snaking hand with her own, before going to take a seat on the opposite side of the wooden island. "No cookies yet, they're still hot," she said, lifting a finger to hush Ella's cry of indignation before it began, "Max only got one because she stole it while I wasn't looking," she finished sternly, turning her scowl on me.

"Yup," I confirmed, popping the 'p' and pulling up a pew, "and I got the other one because you _still_ weren't looking,"

She rolled her eyes; her hands now intertwined and stretched out in front of her in the 'we need to talk' signal used by moms everywhere. A still-grumbling Ella parked herself reluctantly next to me.

"What up, Mama V?" I prompted, given that I didn't think she was going to start any serious conversation herself.

"Well, I, um," she began tentatively, looking down at her linked fingers, resting on the island counter-top. "I got a call today, from work. I found it a little odd – they called me around a quarter to six, so I knew they didn't need me in, or else they would've called earlier. They actually, ah… they offered me a promotion,"

Ella lit up. "That's great, mom,"

Mom nodded cheerfully, but still looked tense. "Yes, it is,"

And then it clicked.

"Mom," I said slowly, dangerously.

"What's up, Max?" she tried casually. _Tried._

"Mom," I repeated, but with less inquisitiveness and more solidity this time. "Mom, where exactly will you be working now?"

She made a weak attempt to look at me, but her eyes only made it to the fruit bowl in the center of the island. She cleared her throat guiltily.

"_Mom, where have they put you?"_

Ella hovered on her seat next to me, but the expression I saw in the corner of my eye revealed that she still hadn't caught on. Her milky brown eyes, usually soft and welcoming, but now wild and panicked, flickered frantically between me and our mother.

"Honey," she said lightly, which only set me on edge even more, "Honey, I'll be working at the NYCI,"

That was all I needed to hear. I slumped back on the stool, having stood up at some point, my eyes wandering like they were lost somehow. My throat was dry and closing up, but that wasn't going to stop me making my case.

"Mom," Ella started, but I guess she wasn't in the mood to be babied either, because she stopped and turned to me instead, "Max, what does that mean? What's the NYCI, is that a bad thing?"

"Oh God, not this," I whispered sharply, avoiding the question. "I mean, on top of all the other obvious reasons why I am so not okay with this, it's… that's so _cliché_,"

"What?" Dr. M (motherhood card temporarily revoked) looked taken aback.

"I'm seventeen," I spat, my face scrunching up defiantly, "I'm about to go into my last year of high school and you're going to make me do it somewhere completely new, with completely new people. This is like a freaking teen sitcom – a really bad one at that, if they're even looking twice at tropes like this,"

"Completely new place, completely new people," Ella echoed quietly. Suddenly, her head shot up and she eyed mo–_ Dr. M_ distrustfully. "That doesn't mean what I think it means, does it?"

I sighed angrily, but it came out as more of a childish huff. "Of course it does, Ella," I narrowed my eyes at the woman sitting opposite us, aloof and agitated. "Freaking Hell, I can picture the segregated cliques in the big white cafeteria now. Let me guess: short, sweaty, balding, sweater-vest-clad home room teacher," I began, ticking off on my fingers, "Cool, calm, collected female principal, complete with Tybaltesque, snarky, grudge-holding vice," I barked out a cold laugh.

My sister sighed next to me, dejected. "We might as well be reading fan-fiction," she agreed solemnly.

I shook my head again, assessing Dr. M's facial expression and body language. She looked hopeful, but the way she sat was meek and passive, fully planning on letting us soak this up on our own. I looked at Ella then. She didn't seem to have much fight in her either, but I could tell she wasn't happy about it from the way her features were all screwed up together. There was a curious kind of fire in her eyes as she met my gaze.

"Where?" she demanded.

"My friend, I do believe we're headed for the Big Apple," I said, though I knew the question wasn't really for me.

Dr. M seemed to see it that way too. "NYCI stands for the New York City Institute," she explained. She inhaled deeply before trying out a different approach. "I wanted to tell you two as soon as possible; waiting would have only made it harder on all of us. I mean, it was a surprise for me too – the call came straight out of the blue – and of course, I haven't _officially _agreed yet, there's paperwork I need to fill out for that…"

I wasn't listening anymore. I stared blankly over her shoulder, looking more _at _the window than out of it. Hail was bouncing off the glass in frenzied legions as if it were trying to break in; I could hear the claps and rumbles of thunder not far off too. The raucous weather was still going strong, even after over an hour – it must have been a multi-cellular cluster. I'd have to mention that observation if things got any worse; those things could be lethal.

My head turned itself to look at Mags. She was still sitting in the threshold, but she'd laid flat on her stomach with her paws covering her ears, like she wasn't pleased with the news either. The realist in me concluded that the storm was upsetting her, but there was still another part of me, nagging at me that that wasn't the whole story.

Dogs got scared easily, storms happened all the time and sometimes, storms happened at the same time as milestones in people's lives. That didn't mean a thing. That didn't mean anything at all.

My eyes settled back on the window behind Dr. M. The clouds were practically racing past up above. Sporadic stabs of lightning illuminated the streets more brightly than street lamps ever could.

It didn't mean anything. But my jaw tensed anyway and I gulped all the same.

_Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission._

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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**AN: **Thanks for reading!

(I do recognise that the frequent skips make for jolting, choppy reading and I will try to use less in the future, but as I only kept the important bits, not using them would've meant writing out the boring, pointless in-between parts, too. Sorry about that, anyway)

- Leo


	3. II: Ties

******Disclaimer: **I do not own Maximum Ride. I'm not James Patterson or Headline or Doubleday or LBAC or Young Arrow or anyone else who might have rights to Maximum Ride; I'm a penniless teenager who doesn't know how to use an oven. Thanks in advance for not suing me.

**AN: **I'm back. Sorry this took so long; I was away, like I said last time. It's like, Wednesday or something today, right? Thursday? Does it matter? Does time really exist?

Enjoy.

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~ II ~ _ties _~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**t**__-w-o_

_**II **__:_

_**t **i e s_

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_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**i **__have noticed that even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road"_

_ - **S**__TEPHEN __**H**__AWKING_

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~ II ~ _ties ~_

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_MAX_

One month.

We had _one month _until we would be settled in our new 'home'.

Now, before you get all 'but Max, surely you didn't give up that easily. You were Max Martinez and nothing stood in the way of Max Martinez', you're completely right. I was Max Martinez and nothing dared get in my way, lest it be crushed under the filthy sole of my mighty Chucks.

My mom, though… my mom wasn't 'nothing'. Honestly, I think I would have done just about anything for my mom. I know, I know: _ugh_/_aww_. I hadn't really had many people who I cared much about in my life – I'd had plenty of opportunity; I knew plenty of people, but I was terribly picky about whom I could trust and/or open up to and I hadn't met an awful lot of people who I deemed worthy of that. I guarantee I could have counted every bearer of the 'Max Martinez Badge of Trust' on one hand.

That's why I'd accepted that we were moving – _across the country, _completely out of the blue – but that didn't mean that I was going to go out quietly. It had been two days since our dear mother dropped that anvil of an announcement on us both and Ella and I had been spearheading a protest – an especially venomous one, after mom had flown over our heads and released the 'Fat Man' counterpart to the 'Little Boy' we faced on Sunday: we had to pack up our shit and say goodbye to a lifetime of comfortable familiarity in a single month.

"It's like putting the milk in before the cereal, Max," Ella pressed, stabbing at some scrambled egg with a fork. "There's a reason the shampoo goes on first,"

Our plan of action included talking like this around mom: totally normally, as if nothing had ever happened. We bickered about trivial things like celebrities' morality (even though it wasn't really any of our business) and the last slice of pizza and whose turn it was to take the trash out just as we always did. We figured that was a more effective method of passive-aggressively chipping away at mom's chipper attitude than having an ongoing tantrum over it. She'd just brush off our moping and moaning, thinking we were being childish – the message would hit harder this way.

"But why does it matter?" I said cattily, rolling my eyes and pushing my cereal into the milk with my spoon.

"Ugh! I've had enough of you and it's only nine on a goddamn Tuesday morning," she scoffed, pushing up from her seat at the kitchen island and grabbing her bowl of eggs. "I'm going to find Magnolia – at least _she_ doesn't sass me when I'm clearly in the right,"

"Are you sure that's not just because she's, oh, I don't know, a dog?" I called after her as she strutted out into the living room, being careful not to let the humor slip into my voice. Mom was still leaning against the sink, sorting through the mail.

The downstairs area of our house was pretty open-plan, so the kitchen was only separated from the living room by a length of maple counters and cupboards. In my peripheral vision, I watched as Ella found Mags already lying on the couch in front of the TV and sunk into the cushions. I felt weird sitting there on my own, with my mom standing around so casually just feet away, so I decided to go and pick a fight with my sister over the remote. Making sure to clatter the spoon against the bowl as I threw it in, I stood sharply, the chair's feet squealing as they scraped against the tile, and strolled confidently away.

I didn't look back, but if I had, I imagine I would have seen a twinge of guilt in her eyes.

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* * *

~ II ~ _ties_ ~

* * *

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'_So say your goodbyes, we're at an all-out war the world won't survive, but I'll choose how I die tonight – so say you're alive one last time and let the fire rise,'_

The lyrics rang in my ears, but I didn't really hear them.

Usually, when I listened to music like that, it was enough to rile me up on its own and my eyes lit up with the fire of a thousand punk-rockers and I ended up breaking something or other as I bounced off the walls. That day, my inner metal had abandoned me, leaving me perched on the edge of my bed, staring blankly at a random spot on the wall near my bedroom door.

I'd realized that it was coming as soon as mom told us about her promotion, I think. But it hadn't sunk in until that moment.

The problem was that I had friends. I had incredible, close, initials-in-trees, promises-in-blood, friendship-set-in-stone-forever friends; friends who I would eventually be forced to break the news to.

That sucked.

I mean, it didn't suck at all to have friends under regular circumstances. Generally, I wasn't all that skilled or talented at friend-making, nor did I have much experience in that area, so it was nice to know that I'd managed to rope at least a couple of people into putting up with me at an early age. Getting bored and lonely would probably have been a frequent problem for me without them; I was a resourceful person, but I was also quite the extrovert, which running laps around the park for hours every day just wouldn't soothe.

For a while, I carried on sitting there inanimately, letting my butt imprint on the mattress and burning a hole through the wall with my scornful stare. The album I was listening to had just run over halfway through when my phone buzzed demandingly in my hand. I peeled my eyes away from the paint work, frowning down at the offending device as the caller ID popped up. Sam.

I leaned sideways to pop the 'pause' button on the CD player that rested on my nightstand, not bothered enough to stand up. Then, I relented to the irritating default jingle resounding from my cell.

"911, what's your emergency?" I said, raising the pitch of my voice slightly to sound like an Emergency Services operator.

"Ho, ho, ho," my best friend replied in a sarcastic monotone.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir. We don't service Christmas crises outside the wintertime," I apologized jokingly.

"You really do have an answer to everything, don't you, Max?" he sighed, but I could practically feel his warm smile radiating from my android. Or maybe it was overheating.

"I really am sorry; sir, but I don't know any Max. I'm Caroline and if you don't have an emergency to report, I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this call," I retaliated.

"Wait, wait – I have an emergency! I do. I have a really, really big, huge, massive, gargantuan, terrible, horrible, tragic emergency," he sounded panicked at first, like he actually believed I was going to hang up, but his voice slipped into a mock-tortured whisper as he described his 'predicament'. "Miss Emergency Services operator lady, I am pained to report that I have four video game controllers and only two friends to play with,"

I gasped. "Oh, God!" I choked out, "Oh my…" – sniff – "…gosh…" – sniff – "I have had victims of all sorts of heinous crimes contact me through this very line, but…" – sniff – "I am so sorry, I really am. I sincerely apologize for ever doubting the legitimacy of your plight for even a second, sir. I'll be right there,"

There was a strangled breath from the other end. "Thank you. Thank you so much, Caroline. Just… please, come quickly,"

A juvenile grin wriggled its way to the surface as I tapped the 'end call' button with my thumb, but withered and died in an instant the moment I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to let on that I'd probably never see them again, or at least not for a long time.

_No, _insisted a desperately indignant voice in my head, _there are a hundred thousand reasons why you can't tell them yet._

_Name one, _hissed the voice of reason. The first voice shied from the challenge and the only voice left was my own. Sadly, my own seemed to agree with Mr. Realistic, because I sighed resignedly and went to my closet, wondering how I'd phrase it.

I pulled (or rather, violently ripped, on account of my freshly soured mood) out a plain gray hoodie, deciding that my ink blue denim shorts and black-and-white TLOU Fireflies Raglan shirt were presentable enough. As I threw on the jacket, I checked the power on my phone and grabbed my hairbrush. The bar read 98%, I processed as I dragged the bristles through my wayward mane, already on my way down the stairs. I scooped up my battered red Chuck Taylors as I emerged from the narrow stairs and passed the door to the utility room.

"I'll be at Sam's!" I bellowed, hopping into the shoes and snatching my keys from a small set of hooks, fixed just above a larger set which housed a cluster of jackets, scarves and coats, in the hall. I hadn't touched them since Sunday and I had a strong suspicion that mom had been cleaning up after us more thoroughly than usual.

"Don't be too late!" trilled Ella, from God knows where, before mom could reply. She would have just said exactly the same thing anyway, which I had a feeling Ella had reasoned too.

When I stepped out, it was around half past ten. The weather permitted me the choice to walk or drive; there was a light breeze and the air was warm, but breathable. If I'd been going anywhere else, I would have taken the car on the premise that there was a chance it would inconvenience my mom, but I was still feeling flighty about spilling to the guys, so I took the sidewalk to clear my head.

As I jogged past the same tree I'd taken refuge under a couple of days ago, I tried to settle a deal with myself. I would let it happen naturally; I didn't have to stress over planning out the entire painful conversation. To quote Ana Monnar, 'whatever is going to happen will happen, whether we worry or not'.

Unfortunately, the wool cannot be pulled over the eyes of Max Martinez, not even her own, and my confidence at that moment was merely skin-deep. The storm in my stomach persisted like the ghost of Sunday's thunderstorm returning to haunt me; I was being consumed by a relentless whirlpool of guilt and worry as I left that tree behind.

For what was potentially the first time in my life, running left me stranded in a sea of stark sadness, and even though I was getting away, I felt like I would never escape.

.

* * *

~ II ~ _ties ~_

* * *

.

"Just go. _Go_," Mazin howled dramatically, flinging his body backwards into the couch and slapping the back of his hand to his forehead, "I'm not worth it! Go on without me!" His lanky legs were sprawled out across the floor and his left arm fell into Ari's lap as he went limp, making some throaty, theatrical choking sounds. Ari's features twisted, horrified, and he shoveled Mazin's 'corpse' off the couch, controller still in hand.

Sam and I were sitting opposite each other on bean bags, placed diagonally from the sofa, in front of the TV screen. Unfortunately for said teenage boy, the body of his recently 'deceased' Arabic friend was destined to fall on him at some point the moment they decided to sit next to each other. I tuned out their puerile boyish yapping and focused on the game, as always having to be the one to keep our butts off the barbecue.

We'd ducked into a boxy, glaringly white room as soon as Mazin had shakily voiced that he'd been hit. It appeared to be an office of some sort, but it didn't have much in it: a thin, wheeled metal table bearing a sleek black phone book, loomed over by a similarly sleek wall phone; a metallic desk, totally clear save for a bursting pen pot and computer monitor, complete with a keyboard, a mouse in the center of a square mouse pad and a modern-looking computer counterpart. There was also a thermostat opposite the wall phone, but it appeared to be broken because it couldn't seem to decide whether the temperature was 21, 98 or 99 degrees. Huh.

I crouched with my avatar and sent her creeping over to the desk. There were a couple of drawers, which I strongly doubted would surrender anything of use, but looting what you could was always worth a shot. The first was locked, but I took note of the odd shape of the key hole; maybe I'd find the key somewhere in the building and we could come back. The caddy in the center held a bunch of folders and loose scraps. I crammed a couple of the folders whose titles merited a second look into my avatar's backpack and gathered a few of the loose papers, figuring we could use them to curb the flow of blood from Maz's leg.

My avatar's fingertips were brushing the horizontal handle of the third drawer, the furthest to the left, when a curious little noise swelled from Sam's throat. It was a sort of strangled grunt and it carried some serious enmity, a good noise to make if you're in the mood to make everyone around you fall off their freaking seats without even touching them.

"What the balls, man?" choked Mazin (we all seemed to be doing a lot of choking that day), who, at some point, had gotten off Sam and curled back into the cushioned couch – or curled as much as a person could, with such a lean, gangling body.

I glanced over at Ari and he was already looking at me, using the same face we always made at each other when Sam or Maz did something stupid, but with a hint of concern this time. I imagine I probably looked the same way: something had really put Sam off, but all the same, it was only a video game.

Sam was looking pretty flustered by the time I turned back to the screen. Angling my avatar's vision up from the desk, I saw that he'd picked up the phone book, but the moment everyone had calmed down he made the noise again and frantically closed it. Did he not want us to see what was in it?

He sighed, letting out a tired chuckle as he crossed his legs and planted his elbows on his knees. "Sorry," he said, his avatar pocketing the book, "It was covered in blood. I mean, I knew this was a gory game, I just wasn't expecting it,"

_Says the red-faced boy as he stands right next to his heavily, rapidly bleeding comrade – yeah, hmm, uh-huh. Sure you weren't._

It was all pretty sketchy, IMHO. I made a note to never turn my avatar's back on him. It probably wasn't a wise idea to leave him alone with an already wounded Maz, either. I wasn't sure whether he'd really gone rogue, but I wasn't going to take any chances – I'm not one to lose at video games.

"Anyone got any ideas?" I asked, yanking open the last of the drawers before I could get distracted again.

There was an assortment of seemingly random items. Some of them were fairly normal, like a pencil sharpener and some more biros scattered around, but there were a few rather off-the-wall objects in there, like a row of neatly placed Petri dishes at the very front, all containing different kinds of the same weird gooey substance. There was some downright sinister stuff too; a collection of scalpels and needles in a clear plastic case, an envelope addressed to one 'ISEDHGH/#088798', a leather-bound book titled 'The Angel Experiment: Operation & Maneuver Manual'…

After making sure I had enough inventory space, I helped myself to some of it. Hey, maybe it would give us a clue about how to find what we were looking for.

"I was kind of hoping you would," Sam answered, pouting.

"I do," I chirped, "I just wanted to see what was already in the pool,"

Ari hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe we could… go back to the elevators," he pondered aloud, sober brown eyes fixed on his section of the screen.

"The elevators are broken, though," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's why they'd be useful. Going up inside them would make too much noise; they'd be waiting for us at the top for sure. We can bind our hands and climb up," Ari countered.

Maz looked utterly lost, but being Maz, he seemed entirely content with being out of the loop. "I do not have the faintest clue what the actual ram-a-llama-king-kong you lot are on about, but I have every blind faith in you,"

"Do you not remember the elevators?" Ari asked lowly, grinning. He'd ripped the lower half off one of Maz's avatar's pant legs and we were trying to press the paper from the drawer to the wound. I hadn't expected it to work because video games usually had a number of pre-programmed items you could use for healing, but this game had proved itself to have impressively realistic physics.

"I don't remember what we're even supposed to be doing. I don't remember the game's name, either. But then, I don't really remember what soap looks like, mate," said Mazin, his British accent coming through more strongly as his tongue familiarised itself with the words.

"I believe that," I threw in.

Sam rolled his eyes. "We're supposed to be escaping from this lab facility,"

"Without getting caught by the scientists or the wolf-men," Ari added.

"Oh," Maz frowned. "Then why are we going _up? _Are we supposed to jump off the roof or something?"

"Exactly that," Sam confirmed, "Our characters have wings. The first goal is to fly away from the facility,"

The leaves of paper were absolutely soaked in scarlet now, rendered useless. I grabbed Maz's abandoned pant leg and tied it as tightly as my strength stats would allow around his calf. Blood began to seep into it instantly, but slower than before. The pressure was helping. "I think that's all we can do for now," I conceded, "I was going to suggest we take the back stairs, but they probably have that covered. Elevators, ho!"

Just as we were about to take off, my phone decided to speak up. I was really beginning to get tired of that thing.

"The number you are looking for has been disconnected," I said coolly.

"Sweethear– Max, it's almost dinnertime," my mom said, ignoring my antics. Opting to cut the friendly crap, I noted. "You've been at Sam's for hours. I'd like you to come home before it gets dark,"

"Oh, would you? Well, that's awfully sweet," I growled back coldly.

She sighed submissively. "Yes, I would. Listen, I know you girls are mad at me and you have every right to be, but I'm still your mother and it's my job to keep you safe,"

"_Oh,_" I scoffed, "Your job, huh? That it? You look out for us because you feel obligated to?" Mom tried to cut in, but I stopped her. "Save it, Valencia. Consider yourself fired,"

I stabbed spitefully at the 'end call' button, letting out a wheezy, irked huff as I threw my phone across the cream carpet. An uneasy silence gathered over the room. I was sitting feet away from them; they couldn't really have avoided hearing the whole thing.

"So," Sam started tentatively, his voice soft. "You want to tell us what that was about or…"

I really didn't. The pit of misery was back, but I didn't think I'd ever have been able to make myself do it if I didn't do it then.

"I, uh," I began. Suddenly, I knew exactly how my mom had felt. "My mom got a promotion at her work,"

Maz, ever a little slow, looked relieved. "Oh, good for her. She's a vet, right?"

"Yeah, she is," I said, my voice getting progressively smaller. My forearms rested on my knees, my head down and my hood up. I clenched and unclenched my hands nervously. "It's a really good promotion, too. She says she'll get paid a lot more, with a ton of perks, and she'll be working to actually develop cures for stuff,"

"But?" Ari prompted, on the same 'where's the catch' wavelength I'd been when mom told me and Ella.

"But she'll be working in New York," I breathed, my voice catching at the end. My eyes burned, but my tears knew their place. "And she can't commute thousands of miles to get to work every day,"

The silence crept back in. Maz looked blank, lips parted, but lost for words; Ari's features were somehow aggressive and pensive at the same time, an expression I didn't think existed before I met him.

My gaze slid onto my best friend last, and to be honest, I wished I hadn't looked at all.

.

* * *

~ II ~ _ties _~

* * *

.

**AN: **Sorry for any accidental British English spellings; I tried to fix them all but I'm not used to pretending to be American.

By the way, I checked this story's traffic stats and the review count doesn't match up with the number of views by a long shot. It's encouraging to know that so many people decided this sounded interesting enough to read, but feedback would be 100% more useful than a number. Also, I would probably die if that many people reviewed.

- Leo


	4. III: Wax

**AN: **In case anyone was wondering, the lyrics I used in Chapter 2 were from 'The Phoenix Reborn' by Crown the Empire. I'll probably be using a lot more of their lyrics later on.

This chapter has had to go through some heavy editing and even after all that, I'm not exactly very fond of it, but it was necessary. I hope you guys like it, anyway.

Enjoy.

.

* * *

~ III ~ _wax _~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**t**__-h-r-e-e_

_**III **__:_

_**w**__ a x_

_._

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**i**__f __**i**__ had had the power to prevent my own birth __**i**__ should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions"_

_- **F**__YODOR __**D**__OSTOYEVSKY_

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* * *

~ III ~ _wax _~

* * *

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_MAX_

_10:12AM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

The days ran by faster than I'd expected. When they were happening – when the sun broke through the clouds and the branches swayed in the breeze – each day felt like it would last forever. And then the next day felt like it would never end. And the next one felt the same… and the one after that… surely the next?

Well, of course not. Nothing lasts forever, however much it feels like it will. And, by the time three weeks had disintegrated, I think I knew that better than anyone.

The guys certainly hadn't been helping me cope with the cold, hard inevitability of change – instead, they'd decided to spit at my sudden fragility and shove everything I'd ever loved about the place where I'd grown up in my face.

That's right; ladies, gents, distinguished guests: the three dimwits I called 'friends' had spent three weeks, give or take, taking me on an excruciating trip down Memory Lane, doing all the things we did as kids and showing me just how perfectly peachy it was to live there (as if I wasn't already painfully aware).

I didn't understand what they were looking to achieve. Trying to convince me not to go would have been a pointless endeavor: it was too late by then and it was initially my mom's choice for us to move anyway. Maybe they were aiming for some kind of big send-off, some enormous metaphorical banner to say 'So long Max, it was nice knowing you'. I'd have preferred if they hadn't, honestly. It would have made it easier on all of us to just hang out two or three times a week, as per usual, and then rip the band-aid off when I was just about to leave.

However, we were talking about _my _friends here, and I didn't tend to gravitate towards particularly 'nice' people. Also, that day was the last day I would be able to spend a substantial amount of time with them because mom wanted Ella and I to get more involved during the last week. This meant that, as they were such royal jerkwads, on the morning of August 11th, they called to tell (not ask, _inform_) me that we were going paintballing.

_Paintballing._

You may now be wondering, 'why, Max, what on Earth is wrong with paintballing?' Well, let me take you back a few years – nine years, to be exact, when we were all nearly nine ourselves.

.

* * *

.

"_Are you, Max Martinez, ready to take the ultimate pledge of unbakeable friendship?"_

"_I think you mean 'unbreakable', Ari. 'Un-bray-kuh-ball',"_

"_Shut up, Sam! Max – are you ready?"_

_Three children, somewhere around eight or nine years old, stood in triangle formation around a fourth, the only girl. They were in a wide, shadowy room with a low ceiling, lit only by the candles held by the three boys. The girl was holding a candle too, on a tiny bronze-colored plate, but this one was unlit. Her companions seemed to have dressed up for the occasion, each wearing some type of garb resembling black cloaks; another of these garments lay in a heap at the girl's feet._

_The little girl sucked in a deep breath. "Yes," she exhaled sharply._

_The boys glanced at each other and nodded somberly. They began to hum softly, padding in slow circles around the girl – Max. The humming gradually intensified, getting louder with each step they took. Once they had completed three circuits, they stopped abruptly and reached their candles towards her – she tried to retreat from them, spooked by the fire, but there was nowhere to go._

"_Max Martinez, daughter of Valencia, sister of Ella – are you prepared to become best friend of Ari, Sam and Maz, and stay their friend until the end of time?"_

"_I will," she whispered._

"_I am," muttered the boy behind her. The one to his right, the one who hadn't spoken yet, elbowed him in the waist._

"_I am," she amended._

"_Are you prepared to stand with us, through thick and thin, fire and ice, in sickness and in health?" ("Isn't that, like, the marriage thing?" Mazin whispered. Sam paid him in kind with a jab to the ribs.)_

"_I am."_

"_And, if you should ever be called to battle, will you stand and fight with us? Will you raise your paintball gun to the sky and say, 'I am Max Martinez, daughter of Valencia, sister of Ella, best friend of Ari, Sam and Maz, and our flame of friendship will never go out'?"_

_She seemed to contemplate this for a moment, staring cautiously at the candle in her hands. "I will," she answered._

_The boys nodded solemnly again and held their wicks to hers for a few seconds, to be sure it had caught alight, then moved back a couple of steps and shuffled around her one more time __– _four circles. Wicked grins spread across the boys' faces as they watched the girl hold up the candle, transfixed in awe. She was silent and unmoving for a while, absolutely spellbound, until her clouded eyes began to clear and a similar smile to the boys' – her friends' – lit up her face.

"_What now?" she asked hoarsely._

"_Now," said Ari, pulling his hood down to reveal a mop of messy brown hair, "we test your promise."_

_The other two mirrored him by removing their hoods as he produced four small red squares from his cloak and held them out: tickets or passes of some sort. He turned them around so the text faced Max._

_Paintball._

_Suddenly, the room was flooded with light and the thick aroma of exotic food. The kids groaned and covered their eyes, shocked by the acute brightness, having adjusted to the dark. As the shadows retreated, it became apparent that they were in a basement, and their cloaks were just bath robes._

"_Mazin, you little monkey," chided a brown-skinned woman, standing at the top of the steps, "what have I told you about standing around in the dark down here? You will ruin your eyes. And don't play with candles!"_

"_Mo-om!" cried one of the boys. Mazin. He definitely took after her, appearance-wise._

"_Alright, I'm going. Lunch is ready, kids. Bring those candles with you – carefully! – so I can put them out," she called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the door._

"_Thanks, Mrs. Nourahmed," the children chorused, sans Maz. They stood silently for a few moments, emotionally taxed after their 'ceremony'. The 'cloak' on the floor caught the girl's eye, and then, realizing it was for her, she picked it up with her free hand and swung it over her shoulder. Her small fingers clutched it tightly, more attached to what it symbolized than the material itself._

"_Paintball later, then?" Ari pouted, heading for the stairs._

"_Paintball later," Max agreed, beaming around at them; infecting her new friends with a wild, giddy feeling. And, after that, they couldn't stop: they grinned over lunch, they laughed as they ran free on the paintball course; Ari and Maz carried on smiling even when Max and Sam won; their eyes twinkled at dinner in their respective homes, and the four of them fell asleep that night still glowing like the candles Mazin had found in Mrs. Nourahmed's bedroom._

.

* * *

.

Our friendship had begun with paintball, and it would end with paintball.

I was sure they'd realized that, which was what frustrated me the most. I mean, thanks, guys, really – way to bring it all crashing down on me. Genius, I tell you. Ya couldn't have wished for better friends in the whole wide world. [Insert peeved sigh.]

They had declared that this Trip of Doom would be happening at 2PM that day and that Sam would be picking me up, so I didn't have to worry about driving and I still had a few hours to steel myself. Of course, mom wasn't going to object to me spending some of my last moments (in Arizona, I mean. My last moments _in Arizona_... I think) with the guys I'd grown up with, but she was sure as Hell going to take advantage of the leftover hours before and after to get me involved with the moving process.

"Honey, could you start working on that pile over there? Thanks, sweetie," she said, motioning with her wrist at a couple of stacks of cardboard boxes by the kitchen entrance. She was carrying one of the larger boxes outside to load onto the moving truck. Don't ask me why we were having our stuff moved over to New York a week early – apparently, her wacko company had arranged temporary accommodation already, where we'd be staying until we found somewhere to live. Mom said she'd found a few nice places online that we could afford, so we'd go and view them before school started.

One of the movers, a friendly African-American woman called Dolly, came in through the hall after mom had left. She was helping us pack the boxes onto the van while her business partner, Lain, manned the steering wheel (not that he was going anywhere). I'd probably have been bothered that I was wearing an old, colossal off-white tee, a pair of ancient, crusty sweats and some tight, mud-encrusted black shoes as paintball gear, or that I hadn't brushed my teeth yet and my hair desperately needed a wash, but I was too tired to care. I'd likely never see either of them again anyway; we were only sending off stuff that we wouldn't be able to fit in mom's car on Sunday.

"So," she said anticipatively, picking up two smaller boxes and placing one on top of the other in her arms, "City of New York, huh? I've got a niece there."

I was still trying to shuffle a couple of boxes off the rest of the stack. I huffed, pushing them back on and trying a different tack. "Huh. Maybe I'll meet her," I shrugged. It would be nice to have some connections, to not be plunging into the unknown completely, but I wasn't all that concerned about meeting the random niece of a mover lady I hardly knew.

"I don't know; it's pretty big, but she's in high school too, so I guess you might," she mused, trailing off. "Her name's Monique," she added, politely trying not to notice me having trouble. I didn't care too much if she watched or not, I was going to get those damn boxes out if it killed me. "It's a pretty big move – AZ to NY."

"Yeah, it is," I agreed; now victoriously cradling two medium-sized boxes of my own. "It's for my mom, though, so I'm not _too _mad about it."

She laughed heartily, following me up the path in the front yard. "Not _too _mad – you can't just be totally chill about this kind of thing, I guess. You're what, seventeen? You'd be starting the last stretch of the 'best four years of your life' on the 25th then, right?"

"I thought that was college," I answered, a small smile creeping up on me as we placed our boxes gently into the back of the van. "I do at least get a while extra off, 'cause school in NYC starts in September instead."

"A-ha, there's always a bright side," she said, grinning.

That caught me.

I paused, glancing from the ocean of boxes to the house. Ella and mom were just emerging with more of our stuff, chatting cheerfully. Could this move actually be a_ good _thing? I'd written it off from the start, thinking only of everything we'd be leaving behind. We were all happy in Arizona, so mom's promotion really was the only reason we were making the move. But I hadn't even considered that I might be happy in NY too, and I definitely hadn't thought about the (albeit slim) chance that I'd be even happier.

I looked back into Dolly's bright, warm face. She seemed like she really believed it.

"Maybe," I replied.

Or, maybe not.

Just sayin'.

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* * *

~ III ~_ wax _~

* * *

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**AN: **I'm considering rewriting the summary. I like it as is, but it doesn't really say anything about the plot. I don't want anyone to get the impression that this is just about Max going to a new school and making new friends and enemies and then getting asked to prom by Fang or something and living happily ever after and all that jazz, because it's really, really not. Really.

- Leo


	5. IV: Reunited

**AN: **Hey again. Just wanted to take a second to thank everyone who has reviewed this so far. You've all helped a ton, one way or another, and I couldn't be more grateful.

I hope you all enjoy this.

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* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**f**__-o-u-r_

_**IV **__:_

_**r**e un it__ ed_

.

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**b**__ut the thing about remembering is that you don't forget"_

_- **T**__IM__** O**__'__**B**__RIEN_

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* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

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_MAX_

_1:54PM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

Segregating our house from the one to the right was a narrow wall made of stone bricks, which stretched the entire length of the house and kissed the sidewalk between the two driveways.

I'd never liked that wall.

It was just a little too tall for me to see over so it always felt restrictive and isolating; almost every other driveway-medial fence on the street (some houses didn't even have them) was at least short enough that you'd have to pretend you were distracted or in a hurry getting into your car, so as not to catch the eyes of the hyper-friendly elderly couple next door. It had been built before mom bought the house, but now it made us look moody and unsociable, or like we hated our neighbors.

I mean, not that we didn't hate our neighbors (I did, at least, for the most part). I was just uncomfortable with the possibility of being pinned as the 'That Family' of the neighborhood. (It was a little ironic, really; I'd never been one to throw myself under the spotlight, but I always managed to end up in it anyway.)

Plus, it was one of those crack-riddled, moss-crawling walls that cast a shadow right at the end of the driveway, where you could just tell something was about to lunge out from, but you had no idea what – an ax murderer, or a little cat, maybe. I often found myself searching for a fat blue worm with a red scarf, asking me to come inside and have a nice cup of tea, like in _Labyrinth. _

That was definitely one of the scarce few things of which I was glad to be ridding myself.

A thick wooden gate speared out from the side of our house into the wall. We had no garage, so we had to have something to make it awkward for burglars to make off with our car. I balanced on that gate then, with my palms sitting on the back of the top beam and my ankles wrapped recklessly around one of the lower beams.

Despite my intermingling terror, anxiety and white-hot fury, I was actually sort of looking forward to paintballing. It had been so long since Sam and I had been able to gloat about completely creaming the others, I'd almost forgotten what it felt like. I say 'almost' for a reason, of course – I still beat the crap out of them at everything else, so I never quite forgot the sweet, glorious taste of winning.

I heard Sam's truck pulling up before I saw it. Granted, I was staring obliviously at that wall again (still waiting for the worm), but I would have heard it first even if I'd be avidly tracking all activity on the street with my hawk-like brown eyes the whole time – it was one of those creaky vans that had rust around the fenders and sputtered a little every so often.

It wasn't really Sam's truck, it was his dad's. I wouldn't have snorted so obnoxiously every time I saw it if it had been any old truck that he had to borrow; the car I used was my mom's after all, but it was a business truck. The guys and I didn't laugh at that, in and of itself, either. It was actually pretty respectable that his dad had managed to set up a successful business of his own, however small. But it was a plumbing company.

It was a plumbing company whose logo was a cartoon plumber's ass.

Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, Sam's plumber father and his plumbing buddies had embraced the crack-flaunting stereotype so openly that they'd plastered a picture on the sides of all their company vans of a guy with his neck stuck under a sink and a pair of bootcut jeans that really didn't fit.

I slid off the gate, still having a fit about that logo, and made my way over to the rumbling white van. It was even worse up close because there were small details you couldn't see from afar. Oh my God, I'm telling you, it was _hairy _and everything. I could barely get a grip on the door handle while trying to stifle my hysterics with the opposite wrist. I could feel the first hot pricks of tears by the time I finally yanked the door open and clambered up onto the gray seat.

Predictably, Sam was sulking in the driver seat, scowling at my house through his window with his arms folded tight. He always got pissy at us for laughing at his dad's business logo, 'cause it was actually supposed to be a joke, and he didn't like that we were 'succumbing' to his dad's lousy humor or something.

As I strapped myself in and slammed the door shut, my raucous whooping had died down into gentle snickering.

"I'm… I just…" I wheezed, scrambling to reconcile with him just enough that he'd start driving already. We had a schedule. "I'm… I can't, Sam, you know full well what a child I am,"

Right then, I burst into a fresh set of shrieks, doubling over, almost thwacking my forehead on the dashboard. Somehow, that worked better than my pseudo-apology; not that you would have to make a very strong case to trump 'I'm… I just… I can't'.

He used the corner of the street that my house was built just off as space to make a U-turn, then began driving back the way he'd come with a faint smile on his face. "Yes, Max, I know. Butt equals funny, hairy backside make Max go 'ha, ha, ha',"

"Oh my–" My stomach ached in protest as I filled the car with noise again. I couldn't stop for minutes longer, and somewhere along the way, Sam joined in. I sighed loudly as our laughter died down, gently bumping my forehead on the window and staring out at the houses that whipped past. "I'm not sorry, you know. 'Butt' does equal funny; you just don't want to admit it because you're bitter about us liking your dad," I murmured into the glass.

"Maybe I am," he said. A little growl bled into his voice and his grip on the wheeled tightened a fraction. "You know how I feel about my dad, and that's that."

I sighed again, more moodily this time, adding a fringe-blow for extra 'hormonal-teenage-girl-just-after-waking-up' effect. "And you know how _I _feel about dads, too, Sam. I'm not going to be all 'I don't have a dad so anyone who does automatically has it better than me', but I think you'd be a lot happier if you stopped skirting around your relationship with him and just… I don't know, _talked _to him about it or something," I shrugged, smooshing my face into the window.

(Just FYI – car-window face-smooshing = not a good idea. Bumpy roads are a health hazard. I'd have a bruise by morning, likely.)

Sam chuckled, making a turn I knew well, into the commercial district. I'd taken this route so many times, I could drive here blindfolded – provided all vehicles, pedestrians and animals had mysteriously disappeared first. That was mostly because it was the way to the area Ari and Maz both lived in, but there were some places along the way that held some meaning to me; the mechanics' workshop, the tattoo parlor, the gym (particularly the hand-to-hand combat clubs) and pool, the pizza place... _I should probably say ciao to all those guys soon, too._

"Skirts? Relationships? Talking about feelings?" Sam said, straining to hold in the unspoken 'maybe you are a girl' comment. I thumped him on the arm, eliciting a yelp of protest and a 'Max! I'm driving! Do you have a death wish?'

"Not all girls are into that, you know," I grumbled, returning (at a safe distance) to my window-watching, "and there's nothing wrong with girls who are, either,"

"I didn't say there was," he shrugged. Man, sometimes boys can be so butt-brained.

"No," I pressed, using the dangerously slow tone I'd picked up from mom ("Max, why is the ceiling below the bathroom dripping?" "Max, where are my fundraiser cookies?" "Max, care to explain why I found your report card in the toaster?"), "but you implied that femininity is a _must_ for women. It's okay for girls to be feminine if they want to, but the issue is that we shouldn't be forced to conform if we _don't_ want to,"

Sam shifted nervously. "Alright, alright, I didn't mean any of that. I just meant that you were using, uh… stereotypically girly kind of… uh, language," he finished, throwing in an awkward laugh in a hopeless attempt to diffuse the tension. I had long since ditched my love affair with the window in favor of fixing a challenging glare on the side of his face.

"Stereotypes, huh? You realize that, by definition, stereotypes are a kind of prejudice? And, for Christ's sake, drop the laugh. It makes you sound like you don't care that women are subjected to gender-based oppression and discrimination on a daily basis," I spat bitterly, "I mean, you probably don't, but you'd go farther if you pretended, at least,"

"I – I care!" he stuttered, his usually pleasant tortoiseshell eyes darting between me and the road. "It's… agh, _despicable _that you're not… treated like you… like people, sometimes,"

Pfft. His wording was sloppy, his syllables drawled too much and I didn't hear a 'sorry' in there anywhere. He was going to have to do a Hell of a lot better than that if he expected me to let that one slide.

"Right, uh-hmm," I said casually, propping my elbow on the door and cupping my chin in my hand. I stared off into the cloud-strewn sky and popped in a dreamy sigh for shits and giggles. "Hey, d'you think Ari would mind teaming with me this time?"

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* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

.

"Aaalright, we are here," Sam announced abstractedly, lining the truck up with the parking lines. I leapt down from the seat before I could be trampled by an excitable Ari or Maz, who clambered out over the manual gear shift. The gravel gave a satisfying crunch under my feet and the cool air was a relief after being in a stuffy, noisy van for so long. I inhaled deeply, spinning in lazy circles across the parking lot, reveling in its familiarity.

It looked mostly the same as it had the last time I'd been there. There were quite a few more trees, the buildings had been repainted and the lot had been extended by a couple of rows – I supposed their business had taken off, then – but everything was right where I remembered it being, and the pre-paintball buzz was definitely still there.

"Whooooa," Maz breathed, mimicking my circles, but wider, like he was performing a ballet.

I laughed, unable to contain my carefree, childish grin. "So, who's ready to lose to me, one last time?"

I wheeled around and absorbed my friends' expressions like I had on _that _ the faint smiles, they all seemed to have taken it the same – a little surprised, a little nostalgic, a little hollow. This time, though, we weren't going to let the soul-crushing undertones of sudden separation get the best of us. This was going to be a day of empty canisters and dirty plays and mud in places where mud shouldn't be, and my name wasn't Max Martinez if we weren't going to have _fun._

"I am," Ari said, reaching out a downturned hand and fastening a stony look on me, "for old times' sake,"

"Yeah, me too," agreed Maz, a bittersweet smile forming as he slapped his hand down on top of Ari's, "except the losing part. I wouldn't bank on that one this time, Max,"

Sam and I glanced at each other and skeptically raised our eyebrows in unison. "Oh, you wouldn't? And why's that?" he prodded, adding his hand to the stack much more gently than Maz had.

"Well," Maz began, raising his eyebrows as well, but in more of a knowing, regal, 'thou art beloweth me' way, as he turned to share a look with Ari, "you can't beat someone who's not there,"

The two of them skidded around on the gravel and rocketed across the parking lot, weaving nimbly through the vehicles even though they could have just gone around them – obviously showing off – and disappeared through the green-tinted glass double-doors. I gaped after them for a moment and a laugh broke free from my mouth because that was just so… so _Ari and Maz, _but then a more sinister thought crossed my mind.

I hadn't put my hand in. That was something we'd always done, after seeing it in teen drama movies over a bijillion-and-one times: we each put a hand in the middle to make a pile, and then lifted them up together, like a team. But this time, they did it without me.

And so it began.

After grabbing our jackets and locking the van, Sam and I made our way towards the entrance, taking in the atmosphere. My stomach, earlier full of figurative butterflies, had since been colonized by an enraged swarm of wasps. Those poor, innocent butterflies hadn't stood a chance as we pulled up into the parking lot. That feeling, a feeling of overwhelming dread, swamped almost everything else I felt then, but nothing could have quashed the exhilaration of passing through those doors.

We were sixteen when we were last there, Ella's age – that was a little over a year, so we could probably expect at least a few of the same employees to be around. I hoped so.

Ari and Maz were at the front desk, handing in the tickets they'd pre-bought. I vaguely recognized the receptionist – her name had been Sandy or Sandra or something of the like – but I hadn't really gotten to know her that well during the (very many) times we'd been there before, so I wasn't bothered about saying goodbye. I hung back with Sam on the stiff brown rug in front of the door, habituating myself while we waited.

The reception area was a relatively large room, as far as reception areas go, but not so big that it would take away from the other, more important and purpose-related spaces. It had four doors: the ones we'd just come through, one to the left leading to a medical room, one behind the desk to the right leading to an office area, and a set directly ahead of us, leading to the Holy Grail.

I snapped out of my autopilot escape route analysis as a red, undone wristband was waved in my face. I snatched it out of Maz's hand and held it up to the light, as if checking whether it was real or not. Mock-satisfied with its legitimacy, I turned to my comrades, pulling the most serious-looking face I could muster.

"This is it, gents. This is the day. This is the day that mice become men; the day that saps become soldiers, half-wits become heroes and wimps become warriors," I announced, tilting my chin up imposingly.

"Hear, hear!" Sam exclaimed, raising his fist. As the other two followed suit, I noticed Sarah or Samantha or whatever roll her eyes good-naturedly as she tapped away at her keyboard. She must have remembered us too, along with our skylarking and shenanigans. That was pretty cute, I had to admit. I decided to bid her farewell on my way out after all; what harm would that do?

"Are you ready, men?" I demanded, still using my military general voice.

There was a cheer of 'ma'am, yes, ma'am', but somewhere underneath it, I swore I heard a couple of 'sir's. I turned slowly to Sam, and sure enough, he stood petrified after realizing what he'd done wrong.

"That's _twice _today, soldier," I growled, "You'd better watch your step."

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly, peering at his shoes. _Hmph. That'll do for now._

I turned sharply on my heel and marched straight through the space between one of the cream loveseats and the bistre brown coffee table, my trusty fleet in close pursuit. Apparently, she'd been half-listening to that hearty pep talk because Sally/Sue/Sophia saluted me as we passed by. I shot her a thumbs-up and grinned to myself as I pushed through the main doors.

The space we'd moved into was much larger than the reception area; taller and longer by only a small amount but definitely wider. To our right, there was a small platform with a gaggle of fold-out metal chairs around it, scattered carelessly after a day of having a bunch of camo-clad butts dropped into them. In the centre of the room, there was a suit-up station, consisting of three rows of wooden benches, some racks of protective gear and several shelves of equipment (guns, canisters, etc.); to our left was a small café-and-grill-ish zone _(note to self: drop by there later)_. The whole place was spattered with dark paint and draped in khaki sheets to give it an authentic army atmosphere.

"Hey! You guys got wristbands or–" a strong, commanding female voice rang from near the platform. I broke away from my hungry thoughts to see a young woman with a striking black concave bob cut, shiny maroon lips and a full set of dirty camo gear stop in her tracks. Her eyes widened before she leaned towards us, frowning deeply. "Hey, are you…"

"Mara," I said quietly, half ecstatic, half disbelieving.

Mara, along with a couple of others, was exactly who I'd been hoping would still be there. She was the one we met first all those years ago. She'd been so enraptured with us that she'd taken us on as a sort of class; she let us stick around after games to teach us everything we knew about combining refined technique with animal instinct and balancing practice with preach.

She was an incredible player herself, too. Mara was a head-turner for sure, but when she was out on the field, she moved like a shadow and hunted like a leopard. We'd eventually taken to calling her 'Spot Girl' because of her remarkable camouflage skills.

"Ha!" she whooped, closing the gap between us with a few big strides and pulling the closest of us to her in for a bone-crushing hug (which happened to be Ari and me). "Oh my God, I haven't seen you guys in, what, like a year? Do you know how _poop _it's been around here without my favorite goofballs?" she demanded, growling and popping the 'p's in 'poop' as she shoved Ari and I out of the way and tackled the others.

"I can imagine. Everything that doesn't involve us is automatically poop," Maz consoled, nodding understandingly. He did have a point.

"Hey, do you think we could stop talking about poop?" groaned Sam, struggling to escape Mara's lion grip.

That did the trick. Mara pulled back quickly to scowl at Sam disapprovingly as he stumbled to regain his footing. "You are about to go play paintball, the muddiest and paintiest of all muddy paint-based games, young man. These throwaway poop comments are just a warm-up."

Sam grudgingly pocketed his hands. "We're in Arizona. I don't even know what mud looks like," he grumbled.

Mara rolled her eyes, stepping back to give us a 'my, how you've grown!' look, then stuck her hands in her pockets too. "Right, well, we'd better get you lot in safety gear. I'll run through the health and safety junk after. Snap those wristbands on and I'll get you guys in for the two-forty-five slot," she said, heading over to the benches in the center. As we followed, Maz slipped into stride with Sam.

"It's like dirt, but sloppier," I heard him mumble.

"What is?" Sam snapped quietly. _Huh, _I thought. Maz was like a puppy. Everyone loved him to bits, and you didn't just lash out at him without reason – and when you did, you gave him a pat and a biscuit after to let him know it was still okay.

Sam had been a little… _off_ all day, I realized. He was huffy when I got in the truck (though his reason was normal), then he ploughed right into a controversial topic and panicked when I called him out on it; he slipped up again when we got here and now he was in a mood about being told off, even though it was clear Mara hadn't been serious. I worried about him for a moment, but I didn't want to let myself wonder. I already had an idea as to why he might have been feeling off-kilter and I already didn't like it one bit.

"Mud," Maz offered meekly, glancing nervously sideways at Sam. _Just like a puppy after being scolded, _I thought with a quiet snort.

"Mud? What – I was joking, Maz," Sam explained blandly.

"I thought so," said Maz, frowning contemplatively. His expression cleared quickly, as if making a decision. "I don't get it," he finished confidently, almost proudly, as if he'd brought the stick back to his owner and was waiting for a treat.

"It just – you need water to make mud, and it doesn't…" Sam sighed, "It doesn't rain much here, Maz,"

"No, it doesn't," Maz agreed knowledgeably, still not getting it.

I shook my head, smiling softly as I listened to Sam agitatedly trying to get Maz to laugh at it. However, said dog-boy was either running by different agenda or just really couldn't put two and two together. (I voted for the latter.)

At least I knew there was one thing that would never change.

.

* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

.

**AN: **I'm trying to set a realistic amount of chapters in Arizona, and I promise we're almost there. Just a couple more to go and then the plot will be able to take off. I have Chapter 5 already written; this chapter turned out to be over 6000 words but I decided to split it roughly in half 'cause school's just starting for me, so updates will probably be even more irregular. Bah humbug.

- Leo


	6. V: Reignited

**AN: **Let's all take a moment to be thankful for school. Without it, we would forget why we have weekends. :)

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* * *

~ V ~ _reignited _~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**f**__-i-v-e_

_**V **__:_

_**r**__ ei gn it ed_

.

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**t**__here is nothing __**i**__ would not do for those who are really my friends. __**i**__ have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature"_

_**- J**__ANE __**A**__USTEN_

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* * *

~ V ~ _reignited_ ~

* * *

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_MAX_

_3:23PM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

Once I was out there, it all came naturally to me.

Stalking through the underbrush was a piece of cake. Dodging paint pellets was second nature. Ticking my opponents off the figurative hit list one by one felt as normal and instinctive as breathing.

Memories of doing this a million times before came trickling back into my head too, bit by bit, triggered by little things – finding myself on a gravel path and remembering to lift my foot in a high arc and step heel-first to reduce noise; diving for a pre-placed bunker and remembering to tuck in my elbows between snap-shoots. On one hand, it had only been a year, which obviously wasn't enough time for my skills and expertise to dissipate completely. On the other, it had been a whole year, which obviously was enough time for me to get rusty, so I definitely wasn't expecting to be able to slip back into it so easily. Even just a few rookie slip-ups would've been more realistic.

From coming here so much in the past, the guys and I knew how the game slots worked. If you weren't with a party of twelve or more, you'd enter the arena with any other available party of under twelve, so that people didn't have to wait to play so much. They did have different areas designated for different game modes, but only ones that required specific structures or landscapes, like Fort Defence or King of The Hill; they used that to filter teams sometimes too, but the main area was best for most game types. Perfect, in fact, for a simple elimination game, which we were playing first.

I couldn't remember any of my favorite routes exactly, so I was just meandering for the moment – meandering very stealthily, I might add. I wasn't an idiot. Occasionally, I'd find some sort of landmark – a fallen tree, a big, funky-looking rock – and I'd head in any direction that seemed familiar. I figured most beginners would take cover in the woodland area, so that's where I'd decided to hunt. I brushed up against the trees as I crept my way inward, breathing in cool air. I decided that I liked the smell of forests.

It was quite nice to be alone out there. My stomach had shot up into my throat and my heart had dropped straight through my ass when Sam had suggested that we fly solo this round, but I was actually enjoying the peace. As it happened, there were a lot of things you didn't notice when you were guarding someone else's back, like the insane amount of tiny flies trundling around in the air or the miscellany of feathers strewn across the forest floor. I'd also decided that I liked birds.

The scent of rain was drifting its way lazily through the trees. I could hear running water somewhere nearby, mingling with the soft crunch of leaves, dirt and rocks under my sneakers and the occasional bird call. I'd always rolled my eyes when mom nagged me to 'get some fresh air', but I had to admit, the forest air did have a certain crisp, earthy quality that settled on my tongue and in my throat every time I inhaled.

Wait, back the truck up: running water?

Having a river running through a paintball course would've just been dangerous, and I was _so sure _that some freaking _sinks _had sprouted up from the forest floor. Yeah, uh-huh. Because that happens.

I froze behind a tree to my immediate right, crouching lower on the balls of my feet, frowning as I turned my head to see if I could locate the source. It sounded like it was coming from up ahead somewhere and, if my ears were to be trusted, a little to the right. I slinked through the foliage in a general north-east direction, keeping an eye over my shoulder and staying covered as much as possible.

I had to pause at some points because the noise stopped or dwindled to a trickle, but I found out what was going on soon enough. Some idiots were messing around in the dirt with a water bottle and, upon closer inspection; they appeared to be making mud. If I couldn't tell who they were through their masks, I could sure tell after that. Now all that was to be decided was: to shoot, or not to shoot?

Ha. Ha-ha, ha.

"What the–" the guy on the right yelled, standing up abruptly and searching furiously for the reason his safety vest was now soiled with bright red paint. He caught sight of me and raised his gun, but I skidded to the left and dropped behind a bush.

"You can't shoot once you've been shot, mate," the guy next to him sighed, trading his precious mud for higher air as well. "We're out. Nice job, Max,"

I emerged from my makeshift bunker, grinning deviously. "Thanks," I laughed. Maz had never been one to take losing too hard. Ari, on the other hand…

"I can't believe you'd do that, Max!" he growled, thrusting his free arm into the air to show that he'd been shot. Maz followed suit. "I thought we were friends,"

"And I thought we weren't teaming up." I raised an accusatory brow that they probably couldn't see through my goggles anyway.

"We weren't!" Maz defended quickly. "We were just temporarily trucing in the name of scientific and social experimentation,"

"'Scientific and social experimentation'? You mean… pouring your water on the ground to see if you could make mud?"

"Yes and no. Yes, we were trying to make mud. And we did, see?" Maz continued, proudly gesturing to his mud. "But no, that's not it. We were going to put some of it in the bottle and show it to Sam,"

I snorted. Despite my grin, however, I was sliiightly concerned for Maz's wellbeing.

"You got that he was kidding, though, right?"

"Oh yeah," Maz nodded enthusiastically, "we just wanted to see what he'd do. Hence 'social experimentation',"

"Well, first of all, I think he'd point his gun at Max," said a voice from behind me.

_Crap._ I'd been so busy talking to Ari and Maz that I'd forgotten to keep an eye out for other opponents! I surged for cover behind the same bush I'd used to hide from the first two, but on the other side this time, raising my head just above the vegetation to eye up my new attacker: Sam, of course. His gun was still aimed at me, but it was against the rules to shoot at other players' heads and, as that was the only part of my body visible, I felt pretty confident.

"And then I think he'd alert her of his presence and fail to shoot in time before she got to cover," I finished for him, flashing a smirk.

"And then she'd get cocky before realizing that they were at a terrible stalemate because neither of them could shoot unless she stopped being a wuss and scooted out from behind her beloved bush," he countered smoothly. Unfortunately for him, he was completely wrong. He couldn't shoot me because all he could see was my head, but he was standing right out in the open. All I had to do was make sure he didn't notice me trying to line up a shot through the leaves.

"Are you sure about that?" I said in a low tone, buying time. I couldn't shoot through the thick of the bush or the pellet would explode inside it. The top of the bush was less dense and easier to aim through, but I'd have to be careful not to rustle the leaves. Eye contact was also going to be quite a problem: if I looked down, he'd know I was planning something.

Something miraculous happened then.

"Hey, Sam," Maz called, unintentionally coming to my rescue. Sam looked up at him, granting me a few seconds to look down and adjust my paintball gun towards his chest. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping he wouldn't move. "We made you something," he said. I assumed Maz was indicating to the brown slop on the floor because Sam's head rolled back and he let out a 'not this again' groan. _Well, Sammy-boy, I'm afraid you're about to feel even worse._

"You never answered my question," I smirked as I pulled the trigger. _Smack. _Bullseye.

He stood in silence for a moment, head still tilted back, before slowly lowering his head to look at his chest. A pool of crimson had bloomed there. His lips peeled apart but he stayed silent, apparently stunned.

"Now, if you boys will excuse me," I began, coughing lightly and brushing my knees off as I stood, "I have places to be and opponents to eliminate. The base is that way, and you might want to keep your hand up so you don't catch any bruises on the way back from people who don't realize you've already _lost. _Oh, and close your mouth, honey. Flies are attracted to bullshit,"

Then I turned and stalked off in the opposite direction from the main building, silently praising myself for that snazzy improv. Not that it was a big deal; I'm generally a rather snazzily-spoken person anyway. Snazzily? Is that a word? MS Word says no, Google says… hold up, gimme a minute… Oh. Google also says no. Okay, maybe not then, but we'll just tuck that into the Complete Dictionary of Maxism (not to be confused with Marxism) for future ref. What's that? Oh, oops, that's just my VDEISA – (Very) Deeply-Embedded Inner Sensible Adult – telling me to 'stop breaking the fourth wall and get on with the damn story, you knucklehead'. Jeez, no need to be so rude about it.

Okay, where were we? Ah. We were flouncing off into the depths of the woods to kick some beginner booty – just what I like to hear. Now, are you all sitting comfortably? (Not you, Graham. I don't care about you.)

Then let's continue.

.

* * *

~ V ~ _reignited _~

* * *

.

"Uuhm," Sam hummed, pausing to think. He leaned forward abruptly, resting his elbows on his knees and loosely crossing his wrists.

We were sitting on the grass next to the parking lot, waiting for Ari and Maz to finish wazzing or something. They'd taken so long we'd resorted to playing a couple rounds of 'Would You Rather', which was odd because I thought boys were supposed to pee quickly, but whatever.

"I would ratheeer…" he began, dragging out the syllables to give himself time to think. He looked over at the big paintball building, his chestnut-brown hair ruffling in the light wind. "Wait, if no one shows up at my wedding, can I even get married? Would the bride and the, uh, the Priest or whoever show up?"

I pondered this for a moment. "No. No one means no one," I answered.

He frowned, turning to look at my face. "But that means the funeral one doesn't work either, because if no one but me was there, I wouldn't even get buried. My coffin would just sit there forever, in the middle of the graveyard," he argued, wrinkling his nose.

"Technically, there'd be no one to put your coffin in the graveyard," I laughed, raising my eyebrows and hugging my knees to my chest.

He hummed again, studying my face. The way he looked at me gave me a weird feeling; he looked like he was considering something, so I squared my gaze straight back, hoping to make him uncomfortable too.

A small smile spread on his face and he sat back, still looking at me, but with less intensity. "Well that was a stupid question," he said bluntly.

My laughter was muffled slightly because my lower jaw was against my knees, but my smile was evident.

"Why don't you think of one, then, Mr My-Questions-Are-Better-Than-Yours?"

"I never said my questions are better than yours. I just said that yours are poop," he shrugged.

I snorted at his immaturity. "It's your turn anyway," I pressed, reaching out and poking him in the bicep.

"Pfft, fine," he huffed, mimicking my leg-hugging. "Would you ratherrr… would you rather go back in time, to meet your great-great-great-grandparents, or go forward to meet your great-great-great-grandkids?"

I frowned. That question _was_ better than mine – not that I was going to tell him that. "Future, obviously," I said in a 'duh' tone, "We already know what's happened in the past, that's why we have historians, and if I want to know who in my family was doing the deed a few hundred years ago, I can go to ancestry dot com,"

Sam laughed, turning towards me again with that same weird look on his face. "When you put it like that," he said defensively.

"You would've said past, wouldn't you?" I accused, narrowing my eyes and screwing up my nose.

"How could you tell?" he grinned.

"Partly because it was all in your voice a minute ago," I said, "You sounded like I'd insulted you. But mostly 'cause you're just weird like that."

He shuffled towards me a little and suddenly I really wished Ari and Maz would hurry up. I looked to my wrist to check the time, but my watch wasn't there. I could tell it had been a few hours, though, from the length of the games – most of which, unsurprisingly, I won – and the color of the sky.

I didn't understand why I felt so flighty all of a sudden. I'd started fidgeting without even realizing at some point; my mouth was dry, my throat restricted and my palms sheening slightly with sweat. And I felt… guilty. That was the worst part, 'cause I couldn't work out what I might've done to make me feel remorseful or ashamed. Just a minute ago, Sam and I had been playing dumb games and joking around, and now the back of my neck was burning.

Speaking of Sam, he'd somehow inched even closer to me across the cool grass without me noticing. I was sure I felt him looking at me, but I didn't want to engage after stumbling through silence for so long.

"Hey, Max?" he said softly. I still didn't want to talk, but it wasn't like I could pretend I didn't hear him. "There's something I've been meaning to say for a while now,"

He went quiet after that, as if deciding it could wait a little longer. Part of me was happy that he stopped, but part of me was stubbornly curious, and that was usually what drove me to open my mouth in any situation.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he echoed. His pause afterwards told me that this was something he clearly didn't want to rush. "I think I've known for a little longer than a while, actually. If I'm honest, I don't really know why I haven't said it yet. It wasn't that I was making excuses or lying to myself or anything. It just hasn't happened yet,"

His pausing had rubbed off on me, and it took me a while to reply. "You are honest. That's a Sam thing,"

"A 'Sam thing'?" he grinned questioningly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, there are some things that are just really… you. Really Sam. Sometimes they're not even things you do or say, just things that remind me of you," I explained slowly, frowning deeply the whole time.

"That is absolutely adorable," he rumbled, and I looked up to find him staring at me with the same intense, almost angered, fascination you might have for a little puppy who just sneezed. "Oh my God, Max, I don't think you even realize how cute that is. I guess that's a Max thing, huh? Obliviousness,"

I gave him a look somewhere between a frown and a smile.

"Hey, Max? Would you like to go on a date with me?"

…

…

…

_Oh._

The neck-burning and hand-sweating and throat-closing were back with a vengeance.

A… date? A _date_?

A what now?

My thoughts fell all over each other and heck if there was any chance of me organizing them when he was looking at me like that. His hand was suspiciously close to mine, fingers hovering off the ground as if waiting for a cue to make their advance. If he was under the impression that I would give that signal, all I could say was not to hold his breath.

See, I had this… condition, let's say, that caused me, in times of great distress or surprise, to panic like a deer in the headlights and spit out the first thing that came into my head.

This terrible affliction was clearly not planning on giving me a break that night.

"How much would you be willing to bet that Ari and/or Maz are taking a dump right now?"

Aaaaaand there you have it, folks.

Ah, it's good to be me.

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~ V ~ _reignited _~

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**AN: **I'm pumped up on caffeine and I've never really written much romance before so I hope it wasn't terrible. [Sarcastic TV voiceover guy tone] Tune in next time for another immensely exciting episode of _The World: According to Max._ Haha I'm kidding; there will actually be a shred of plot in the next chapter*. Hallelujah!

- Leo

*Joking again. Surprise – this story doesn't have a plot! Wow, sorry, I am so sorry. Shut up, Leo. There _will _be plot in the next chapter, but I mean that there have kind of been bits and pieces from these first few which are plot-ish. More foreshadowing than anything, maybe, but I don't write without reason.


	7. VI: Bound

**AN: **So, it's been over a month… uh, sorry? But here's an extra-long chapter with bonus sibling fluff and teenage angst to make up for it? … Enjoy? :)?

*shrug emoji*

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~ VI ~ _bound _~

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r s-i-x_

_VI_ :

_**b**__ o u n d_

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_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**r**__emember tonight… for it is the beginning of always"_

_**D**__ANTE __**A**__LIGHIERI_

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~ VI ~ _bound _~

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_MAX_

_8:59AM, Aug 16_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

I hate being the first person downstairs in the morning. The curtains are all drawn, suffocating the rooms with darkness, and even though you're not a kid anymore, there's still something in the back of your mind telling you to watch out for the monsters behind the couch.

But there was no couch. There was no couch because all furniture that wasn't an immediate necessity had been carted off with all the rest of our domestic crap earlier in the week.

That's right, folks: our last full day in AZ had finally rolled around. The days had stopped running by 'faster than I'd expected' – not because they didn't slip away too quickly anymore, of course they did; I'd just accepted that they'd all be gone before I could blink. And so, we were NY-bound tomorrow, for better or for worse.

After stealthily checking that there were no bloodthirsty beasts waiting for me in the kitchen, I grabbed some supplies and made my way into the middle of the stark-empty living room. _Man, that's weird._ I was going for some nice, safe cereal, obviously, because I would most definitely burn down the house (along with several neighboring houses) trying to fix up anything else.

I sat on the rough-with-wear carpet and carefully ish poured a bowl of Froot Loops. It got boring fast, just sitting there and shoveling multi-grain rainbow hoops into my mouth, but I guess that's what you get when you're used to watching TV with every meal because you're a privileged butt like I was.

Wow, that sounded bitter. I promise I really am trying not to let on too much; I don't want to rush this. I'm just… slightly sensitive about who I used to be. Irked by Max I – wait, ew, no – _Old_ _Max_, so to speak.

With nothing else to do, my mind began to wander from my future – specifically, this Goddamn move – to my past – specifically, Monday. I couldn't stop thinking about Monday. Or, if we're going to get intimately explicit here, I couldn't stop thinking about Sam.

I'm just going to give it to you straight. I know this is going to be difficult for you to process – you might even want to reject the idea completely – but I swear I would never lie to you.

I, the great Max Martinez, had never actually been asked out before that.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe. A stunning, intelligent, athletic, _piercingly _witty (and let's not forget charmingly modest) young lady such as myself, having never _once _received romantic attention? Why, such a travesty should surely be a crime.

Alas, it is true. I'd never been graced with such an invitation prior to Monday. I mean, technically speaking, I _had_ been asked out before that, but nothing I would personally consider worthy of mention; just your average d-bags who thought it was A-OK to go right ahead and harass me while I was clearly busy pretending to do math. Lot of good that did – all either of us had ever gotten out of it was a detention or a big, ugly bruise. I'll leave you to decide who got what.

Naturally, I was flattered. It was refreshing to hear that I wasn't the only one who appreciated my drop-dead good looks for once. However, I think it's also pretty important to note that Sam's timing was abso-freaking-lutely atrocious. Like, what the heck? I understood that he hadn't known the window of opportunity was closing fast, but seriously, if you're going to ask someone on a date, just go for it. It can't be _that _hard.

Well, okay, maybe that's a little unfair. He would have had to consider that I might take it the wrong way and it could mess up our friendship and all that jazz. If he knew it could kick our friendship into the gutter, though, why did he bother asking at all when I was just about to leave? Statistically, most long-distance relationships fail – and sure, 'most' still leaves room for some to succeed, but the idea that we would have pulled through as a long-distance couple was frankly laughable. You'd have to have a pretty strong connection with each other to make it and by the time I was gone, we'd have dated for a week. A _week._

Like I said: ridiculous.

What a nub.

_And _there was also his reaction to my little announcement that I'd shortly be eloping with my remaining dignity to consider, but I didn't really want to think about that. There were few things that hurt me, but betrayal definitely fit the bill.

By the time I finished my internal tirade, I only had a few Loops left and not nearly enough patience to be sitting on the ground anymore.

I'd been packing gradually throughout the week to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I'd left all the sentimental junk for today. I figured if I was going to cry at all, I might as well make it all symbolic and crud and do it right before we left.

After washing the milky remnants of breakfast out of the bowl and chucking said item plus spoon into the dishwasher, I pilfered the box of dry Froot Loops and crept up the stairs. Probably sounds a little harsh to say that I couldn't bring myself to care about waking my mom up, but I was more concerned about prolonging whatever brief peace Ella could salvage before she was flung back into full consciousness with the realization that this giant mess we've made wasn't just a horrible dream. God knows that's what happened to me, and I was not happy about it one bit.

This date – August seventeenth – the move, the milestone, this whole big awful thing, hadn't really seemed real until now. Nothing seems real until you're forced to think about it. It _isn't _real, not until it seeps into your restless mind and taints whatever faintly pleasant thoughts you were having before. It was like I'd been standing in front of a door this whole time, but it had been closed so I didn't think twice about it. Slowly, though, the door had been opening by itself, and now I could see through the sliver of an opening and it made me feel sick. I wanted to kick it shut and close my eyes, but I knew that at some point, soon, I'd have to take hold of the handle and step through. And that was terrifying.

But Max Martinez does not do 'terrified'.

On impulse, after thinking about big, scary doors for too long, I grabbed the door-handle and gave it a violent yank to get into my bedroom. Ah, much better. Remember, kids: if you're ever feeling stressed, try some senseless hostility to calm you down – and if you ever find yourself intimidated by something, all you gotta do is just completely and utterly raze it to the ground! Inhale and exterminate.

I left the cereal box on my nightstand then threw on some sweatpants and a two-tone hoodie before sliding my duffel bag out from under my bed. The digital alarm clock peeking out from behind my stolen cereal read 9:34. Great, that was plenty of time to finish packing and then do absolutely nothing that could be interpreted as productive in the slightest for the rest of the day.

I'd shipped all the big stuff off on Monday and had the rest of my 'whatever' pile crammed into a suitcase, like clothes and books. Yeah, I read. Sometimes. Dolly and Lain were coming back tomorrow to move everything we'd needed to keep for the moment – beds, closets, etc. – and then we'd jam our cases into the trunk and head off into the unknown.

I went through all the drawers in my nightstand and the dresser opposite my bed first. I found a lot of weird old trinkets, most of which I couldn't figure out why I'd kept. What use could anyone possibly have for a porcelain ladybug with a creepy grin? Part of me still didn't want to chuck them though, however pointless, so I went on the hunt for a handy-dandy box to put all the 'What the Hell is this and Why Does It Exist' things in.

Packing flowed in the same way for a couple of hours, during which I heard movement from both of the other bedrooms and I lost countless brain cells. I decided to leave the most sensitive materials I'd retrieved, i.e. photo albums, on my windowsill to buy myself some time on deciding whether I wanted to put my tear ducts on the line or just shove them into my bag and carry them like a big, looming storm cloud for the rest of my life.

Hey, who needs brain cells anyway?

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~ VI ~ _bound_ ~

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12:00pm, 08/16/14, sitting on the living room floor next to my bubbly half-sister, her sleek violet laptop open in our direction. That's how it began.

_Ow._

"Oh gosh, look at the butterflies!"

_Ouch._

"Ugh, someone, please, take me away from this mundane human life,"

_Holy mother of Mordor!_

"Max, are you even listening?"

"No, Ella, I am not listening to your endless ramblings about the trolls or the trees or whatever it is you're on about this time, because _some of us _are dealing with serious issues right now,"

_Gah…_

"Um, rude much? Whoa, Max, you look super pale. Are you alright?"

_Deep breaths, Max._

"Uh, no…"

_In and out._

"Oh man, I'm gonna go call mom. Stay here, okay?"

_Grghhnnff._

"I don't think… I have… a choice,"

_Ohhh dear._

_Um, pain is just a message, and I'm hitting ignore? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Do any of these psychological pain-relief techniques actually work? Uh… oh, God… one sheep, two sheep, three sheep…_

_Dammit!_

Ella ran off and my senses suddenly decided to hone in on the TV.

A girl, flying, flinging mud at little gnome things. Oh, right – Ella had talked me into watching Disney's _Maleficent _with her.

I didn't normally think too highly of fantasy. You're expected to just blindly believe in every mystical creature and place and law of magic they throw at you because, I don't know, it's _magical_ or whatever. _It just works like we're telling you it works, okay? Plus, like, YOLO, or something_. I had to admit, though: flying around like that, so fast and free, completely untouchable… I could definitely live with that.

I could live with that, at least, if I even survived this skull-splitting headache and these stabbing pains between my shoulder blades.

"Hey mom, uh, something's up with Max," Ella's voice echoed around me, distant and hollow like a shout into a cave. I scrunched up my eyes and the thunderous vibrations from inside my ears washed it away, a tsunami of sound.

Pain shot up and down my back like an electric current, pressing and pulsing violently against my spine, setting my skin ablaze.

It was hardly a pinch compared to the crushing sensation in my head. I couldn't remember anything before the hands; hands, wrapped around my head, squeezing with the force of a car compactor. Hands, flashing behind my eyelids, reaching for my neck. I couldn't imagine anything after them. Hands. I couldn't breathe. Hands.

I slipped into the darkness.

Hands.

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* * *

~ VI ~ _bound_ ~

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I took my time waking up after that. Mom had apparently rushed home from her last day at her workplace to check I was okay – which I was not – and she and Ella had forced me into a kind of semi-conscious limbo as they helped me up the stairs and into bed. I'd been able to slur out a weak "'tis but a scratch" before going under again, so I guess they deduced that I didn't need an ambulance from my unerring ability to crack a good ol' Shakespeare joke.

"Max? Max, honey, are you awake?"

"No,"

"Oh, thank goodness," my mom rolled her eyes and folded her arms. She'd pulled a chair up next to my bed and there was a surfeit of first-aid items and a glass of water on my nightstand. The Froot Loops were on the floor. "I thought you were going to wake up sooner or later. I was terrified,"

I coughed out a small laugh and her amused expression sapped away. "I'm fine,"

"Are you sure? I could postpone the trip a couple days to give you time to rest. We've got time,"

"I'll be alright, ma, it was just a headache," I protested, sitting up slowly. I winced as my throbbing head decided to prove my point. Mom frowned, leaning in to examine my scalp and pressing a hand to my forehead to check my temperature.

"Well that was one heck of a headache then. Have you hit your head recently?" she asked, slowly leaning back with a suspicious expression. I shook my head gently. "I hope you're not getting migraines. Are you stressed at all? Anxious?"

I gave her a pointed look. "Am I stressed?"

I left out the part about the excruciating back pains and hand-based hallucinations; migraines were a rational diagnosis, which was more than I could have conjured up.

"Oh," her forehead creased again. "Well, if you're sure you'll be okay tomorrow… I'll keep some medication on hand just in case. And we'll have to take regular stops for Magnolia's sake anyway, so you can get some fresh air then," she seemed to be saying this more for her own benefit, staring off somewhere above my dresser with a calculating eye.

Mom got up from the chair and brushed some imaginary dust off her jeans. I watched with a squinted gaze as she surveyed the chair and medical supplies then turned to leave. "Call if you need me, hon. I love you," she said, before disappearing through the door. Her footsteps faded fast.

I sat for a moment with my head resting awkwardly on the wall behind me. That conversation got me thinking about tomorrow again. I didn't really know what to expect at all; I didn't even know much about New York. I only knew what (some of) it looked like from watching every Marvel movie about any given member of the ridiculous amount of superheroes there ten thousand times.

A whole lot of fumbling to find my AWOL laptop and a handful of crunchy Froot Loops later, said machine was resting on my duvet and whirring from the tragic effort of opening Chrome. Now, where to start? Couldn't go too wrong by typing 'new york city' into Google, I guessed.

Over 1.7 billion results popped up in under a second. _Damn. _OK, first result: nyc-dot-gov. Why not?

Aug 16 – Schools: Not in Session, and a lot going on at some park somewhere. _Red Hook Food Vendors, Asian Fest 2014, Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza… _nothing really stood out. You're up, Wikipedia.

'_New York - referred to as New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part - is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world.'_

Whoa nelly, info-dump much? I scrolled down to see if I could find anything a little more consumable, but it soon became clear that whoever wrote this clearly had a bit too much downtime.

There was an image near the bottom that caught my eye, though – it just looked like it shouldn't be there. The rest of the cited visuals were all related to nearby text somehow, like a photo of a subway train embedded in the transportation section. It was out of place, existing in the face of irrelevance, as if someone had come and… _hidden _it there. Some kind of Easter-egg, maybe, but meant for who?

The picture itself was a small sketch of wings and a bird's tail around a pair of lips, with a finger raised to say 'shush' and a caption that read _'Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'. _For some reason, I found myself intensely frustrated that there wasn't a link anywhere. I just wanted to know more about that stupid picture, but some idiot had decided to attach a completely out-of-context image with an infuriatingly intriguing caption and leave it link-less.

That was it. Some idiot – yeah, it was probably just some kid looking to mess with people. Now that _was _stupid. What was the point of pranking someone if you never got to see their reaction?

I was too proud – or at least too bitter – to comb the page for more clues. I tried to shrug it off as I took the safer route and sifted through Google Images, but it kept bugging me. That caption seemed, I don't know, _important _somehow. All the lights and landmarks in the world couldn't have wiped _The Incident _from my memory.

A glance at the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen told me it was almost time for dinner, which, as always, lifted my spirits immensely. Some normalcy would be nice, I reflected as I snapped my laptop shut and flipped it over to let the fan breathe. We wouldn't have much time for normalcy in the days to come.

Ella had her laptop open on the floor again when I got downstairs, and mom was sweeping around the kitchen, filling three bowls with chicken stir-fry. My sister seemed engrossed in something, so I went into the kitchen to get us drinks. Mom didn't say anything while I ran my hands under the tap; she just sprinkled some sesame seeds over the food and carried two of the bowls over to Ella.

There was some apple juice and milk left in the fridge, so I poured two apples and a glass of water for mom. I brushed past Mrs. Water-is-Nature's-Drink-of-Choice on my way out with the juices, setting them on coasters that hadn't been there a minute ago before surveying Ella's laptop. I was expecting to see something of a _Doctor Who_ ilk, but apparently mom hadn't been able to bear missing a single _News at Six_ because it was our jolly _Arizona National_ newscasters staring back at me.

"So," mom began, sitting down at a small distance, but close enough to see the laptop screen. "How are we feeling about tomorrow?"

I snorted. _We. _Ella gave me a gentle jab to the ribs to stop me going off and ruining our last day in the house – in our _home._

_This wouldn't be our last day here if it weren't for mom. _I was suddenly angry again and just about ready to blow when Ella butted in. She probably felt me boiling next to her; she'd always had some kind of freaky Sixth Sister Sense. _Eugh._

"I'm looking forward to going to a new school," she offered pleasantly. "I'll miss my friends here, but I'll make more."

_That's easy enough for you to say, Little Miss Social Butterfly. _I didn't contribute.

"Of course you will. There'll be plenty of fun kids at your new school," mom agreed. We stayed silent for a few minutes and I presumed mom was weighing the pros and cons of soliciting my opinion, but eventually decided against it. "How about we see what's been going on lately?" she raised her eyebrows at Ella, who shrugged and pressed 'play'.

The news followed its usual pattern: bad, bad, really bad, scary, terrible, sad, cats, bad, fire, bad, worse, good, bad, ugly, school lunches, new iPhone model, bad, awful, bad, Obama. I tuned it out, but I was still glad it was there to occupy mom and Ella and mostly guarantee they wouldn't try to make more conversation.

The stir-fry went down my throat at double speed for a few minutes as I continued intently not listening to the news, until suddenly the news decided to become uncharacteristically interesting and the stir-fry decided it would be fun to go down my clothes instead.

"Oh! Honey, do you want a paper–"

"Mm, mm _mmm," _I hummed forcefully through a mouthful of chicken, flapping my hand to get her to shush.

'_Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'. _That's what they'd said. 'Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'.

"– Latin phrase which our linguistics experts here have managed to roughly translate into English as 'no justice, no mercy'. It's unclear as of yet how exactly this group is to be described – an anarchist mob, some kind of guerrilla resistance, or perhaps a simple gang – but one thing is clear: the Gotham Ravens are not the urban legend we once thought them to be." The newsreader – Bobbie Clint or something – concluded, leaving an unfortunately large amount to my imagination. Well, if not an answer, at least I had a lead.

"No, they certainly aren't, Janet," said the balding dude next to her (apparently Bobbie wasn't even close). "Now, for the viewers who may have never heard of this group, here's a little backstory on the case for you,"

"Symbols like the ones pictured in the top right hand corner right now began emerging all over New York City some three years ago," Janet continued. A collage of photographs appeared in the corner of the screen, all focalizing on graffiti of similar symbols – symbols that looked an awful lot like the one I'd found earlier. "Rumors had been circulating for some time beforehand of an NYC-based revolutionist cause, but it seemed that nobody was willing to take them seriously, and eventually it became quite the colloquial joke amongst New Yorkers,"

"Yes, and that's exactly where the myth of the legend originated. You see, it was directly after whispers of an underground rebellion began to crop up that these winged motifs materialized in all corners of the five boroughs, so naturally, these followed suit to become quite the laughing stock as well,"

"And since no one but the supremely suspicious and superstitious took them for anything but a modernized _Boy Who Cried Wolf _tale, the NY-native-nicknamed 'Gotham Ravens' have remained an urban fairy-story in the eyes of the general public ever since,"

"Until now,"

"Until now indeed, Paul," agreed Janet, nodding and staring directly into the camera. My heart sank a little. She had the kind of look on her face that broadcasters only give when they're desperate to hook viewers in; eyebrows raised, head tilted slightly sideways like they know something juicy and important. And they'd used a suspicious amount of fancy words so far. And the segment had already lasted longer than their other bits, none of which had been interesting in the slightest. _And_ they were talking about New York on the Arizona news, which meant there was butt-all going on in our own state to report on…

The longer I thought about it, the more hope I lost. They were probably just trying to start some drama by stirring up a moral panic. These elusive 'Gotham Ravens' were probably nothing, and their mysterious symbols would be few and far between. I'd forget all about it in a week.

"– but is this 'new evidence' actual solid proof, or just more rumors on top of everything we've heard before? We'll leave that for you to decide, Arizona. We'll catch you again tomorrow at six. Goodnight," Hhhhrrmmph. 'You decide'? Yup, definitely just view bait.

I couldn't believe I'd let myself get excited like that. I'd been formulating my own conspiracy theories in my head the whole time, imagining gang logos splattered across abandoned buildings and pairs of wings inconspicuously scratched into brick walls like a… a giant flip-note of deceit. A giant flip-note of deceit that I drew myself, and then flicked through so many times that my own lie had started to consume me.

A month's worth of fury filled my lungs until I couldn't breathe. I'd tried shouldering my mom's glass-half-full attitude, but it shattered in an instant as I realized just how much I didn't want to go to New York.

Next to me, the laptop slammed shut, and Ella rose to her feet with a painfully conflicted look. I watched as she calmly put her bowl, fork and glass into the dishwasher, returned for her computer and disappeared stiffly and silently up the stairs. And then I copied her, footstep for footstep, feeling the buzz of tension in the air build as I lathered my silence on top of my sister's.

Who needs twin telepathy when you have half-sister joint scorn?

I didn't really feel the next few hours. I stayed up way past the time mom usually knocked on my door to say 'get ready for bed', and she didn't come to tell me to turn my light off. I did the opposite. I turned the light up until my eyes stung, and kept myself awake with music and social media. I wanted to be as tired as possible by tomorrow so I'd definitely fall asleep in the car and not have to put up with her.

Ella wandered in at some point, and she was crying. She sat on my bed and sniffled for a while before speaking; she didn't need to tell me what was up because it was up with me too.

"New York…" she muttered at some point. After midnight, probably.

"More like Poo York," I snarled, and she laughed so long that everything seemed like it'd be okay.

We went through my 'sensitive materials' too, by which I mean the photo albums I'd come across earlier, not my undies. We started making snarky nickel-and-dime comments whenever we found one with either Dad: Part Un or Dad: Part Dos in it, which was pretty much the best kind of therapy I could have received, given the circumstances. Some of my personal favorites included: 'nice wig, loser, where'd you get it? The end of a mop?', 'the Pathetic Excuses for Fathers Club called; they want their chairman back' and 'I wonder if he abandoned that puppy he's holding as fast as he abandoned us'.

I couldn't be arsed to feel guilty when we started making fun of mom too. I knew I'd regret some of the things I said later on, but so would Ella, so there was no one to give me a condescending look when I felt sorry and lecture me about being the 'bigger person'. And it felt good to get all those things off my chest, even if I was doing it in a petty and childish way. I'd come to accept that I'd probably never be able to handle anything in any other way than with my trademark petty-and-childish approach.

We did eventually get around to the elephant in the room. It was an uncomfortable thing to skirt around all the time, but obviously I couldn't talk to mom about it without screaming, so sharing honest opinions with someone else that had no choice was actually pretty cool.

I don't like to talk about my feelings. At all. I'm more of a swallow-it-back-down-and-let-it-fester-in-your-stomach kind of gal. I guess I was only willing to open up as much as I did because they weren't mushy feelings; if Ella had wanted to talk about boys or periods or something, I would have carted her right out the door without a second thought. Palpable rage, however, is something with which I have extensive experience. Palpable rage is something I can get behind.

"What happened to 'I'm looking forward to our new school'?" I said with a gentle shoulder-bump.

Ella looked at me like I was a total ass. "You're a total ass, Max." She sighed, shrugging. "I was trying to appease mom. She doesn't really deserve it, but I can't help feeling bad about this rift that's opened up between us," Figures. Ella had always been a little closer to mom than I had 'cause she was a natural softie, so she needed mom to be there more when things got her down.

"I don't want to leave here," I grumbled, fiddling with the hem of my hoodie. "I don't want to leave home. But, I mean, New York… if it had to be anywhere, I guess New York sounds like… fun?"

Eh. I tried.

"Hah, yeah… I have always wanted to go to one of those smoky SoHo jazz lounges," Ella sniffed, flopping against my side and resting her head on my shoulder.

Looking back on it, y'know… I'd lived with her my whole life, but I think that night may well have been the first time I ever really met my own sister.

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~ VI ~ _bound _~

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**AN: **I feel like Max was OOC – like, atypically observant and reflective. She thinks more than she talks and she's maybe a fraction too stroppy. I'm planning on giving her a big arc where she sort of _transforms _into The Great and Amazing and Totally Humble Maximum Ride, but I still want her to be her the whole way through. What do you think? I'm going to up the sass eventually anyway, but am I even at base-level sauciness yet?

- Leo


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